North Bergen residents gathered at North Bergen High School, located at 7417 John F. Kennedy Boulevard, to express their concerns to township officials regarding a plan to turn 1.1 acres of James J. Braddock Park into a preschool.

Trailers near Bruins stadium have been used for the township’s preschool arrangement for about 12 years, according to literature provided at the meeting, which also says about 270 students – ages 4 or 5 – attend the pre-school.

North Bergen Administrator Chris Pianese, Chief of Police Robert Dowd, Superintendent of Schools George Solter and Mayor Nick Sacco were just a few of the officials on hand for the meeting.

Nate Burroughs, a consultant for Bruno Associates, did his best to provide clarity on the matter before members of the public took the microphone.

Despite the lengthy explanation, certain residents in attendance were still not impressed.

Still, some residents thought the plan was just fine, praising the way the preschool has been run up to this point.

When the smoke settled, Sacco addressed the crowd, noting that North Bergen is a non-Abbott school district – meaning they receive no additional state funding – and squashed rumors of health concerns around the trailers.

Adding a school gadding a school inside a park is not the proper use of the land. Those that spoke in favor of this work for the township of north Bergen and parents of the attendees of of the preschool. A school that shouldn’t be there. Mayor Sacco had no right to speak and close out a public hearing. The town of North Bergen is huge and they had 12 years to find the school a permanent location. North Bergen originally wanted to build a high school in the park and people fought it now the public and residents of all surrounding towns need to stop this latest attempt of the town to build their own municipalities in the park. Keep up to date with this petition:

Perhaps instead of allowing developers to build housing developments on every available lot of land, resulting in an increased school age population, North Bergen could have been used one of those sites for the needed school building rather than stealing park land from the rest of Hudson County.

[…] The Hudson County Board of Freeholders approved $50 million in bonding related to the future development of a new Hudson County Courthouse, as well as the acquisition of property for open space in North Bergen due to the construction of a preschool. […]

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Hudson County View is an independent media outlet covering news and politics for Hudson County, NJ, and all of its municipalities. Owned and operated by John Heinis, an investigative reporter, Hudson County View focuses on covering elections, public policy, lawsuits, corruption and all other things related to government and politics in Hudson County.